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Match Reports for the Saturday Sixth Eleven

Saturday 21st July 2007: away to Kingstonians 4th X1

Kingstonians 4th X1 186-6 after 35 overs

Dulwich 107-9 after 35 overs

Result: Loss by 79 runs

A remarkable spell of parsimonious bowling by Dulwich off-spinner Gibson, was to no avail today at the arboreally resplendent Windsor Avenue ground today, as the 7th's slid to yet another defeat. This was a climatically untrustworthy sort of day with gangs of clouds, oozing menace, malice and mayhem, circling the ground like a crowd of Millwall supporters at a BM rally. Skipper Smith (alias Captain Birdseye) elected to field in a 40 overs-a-side game. The new ball attack of the willowy Mudassar Hussain and the slightly more substantial Adran Raise did not really threaten the home team's resolve to post a sizeable total on the board and it was not until some way into the evergreen Gibson's spell did Dulwich feel that anything like the "brakes" were being applied.

A brief shower of rain meant that the game was reduced to 35 overs a side. Gibson's allocation was commensurately reduced to 7 overs. Birdseye, much to his chagrin, was left with no alternative but to remove Gibson from the attack at the very moment he was on the verge of a significant breakthrough. Maneesh Nanda took 2 wickets as did the svelte Mudassar Hussain. Charlie Acors also bowled tidily towards the end of the innings, but Kingstonian reached the not inconsiderable total of 186 for 6. For those readers with a statistical bent, Gibson's figures were 7-0-25-0.

Dulwich's innings, for not the first time this season, resembled nothing more than one of Shakespeare's
plays: "The Tempest" and "Much Ado About Nothing" are just two titles that spring to mind when considering Dulwich's batting performances this season, but today's performance can only be described as "The Comedy of Errors". From the second over, when kamikaze Gibson with white headband flailing in the wind hurtled into the decks of the US Navy (i.e. the striker's end attempting a quick single to first slip!) in a suicidal run out, and then to see his partner Nanda bowled round his legs, it soon became apparent that Dulwich would struggle to reach their target despite some excellent but short-lived batting from Adran Raise and Ryan Holloway.

Indeed, the whole innings moved away from Shakespeare and several centuries forward in time and into the realm of the Theatre of the Absurd when Kingstonians introduced slow bowler Jacobs into the attack. Jacobs has a unique bowling action which includes a series of short hesitant steps one foot away from the bowling crease and a round arm delivery popularised by "Lumpy" of Hambledon Cricket Club in 1787. Nevertheless, both Pylas and Choney succumbed to Jacobs' wiles. It was left to Birdseye and Rochford to restore some respectability to the innings. Rochford, especially, showed, not for the first time, that he is a batsman of robust quality who shows a healthy appetite for scoring at a generally faster rate than his father, aptly named "The Dabber". Eventually, the 35 overs were completed with Dulwich some 78 runs short of the promised land.

In an interesting footnote, Gibson revealed that he last played at Windsor Avenue on the very same day that England won the World Cup in 1966. On that day England were referred to as "Ramsey's Wingless Wonders". Are Dulwich 7th's to earn the less complimentary epithet of "Winless Wonders"? Surely not, hope springs eternal and this week's fixture sees the 7th's locking antlers with Whittington, who by their own admission, claim to be North London's worst cricket team. Are Dulwich competing for the Whole of London Wooden Spoon Trophy this weekend?

Significantly, Smith has abdicated his position as captain and handed the Crown of Authority to Gibson, in very much the same way that Richard II gave way to Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV and was so successful that Shakespeare wrote not one, but two plays about him. We can only speculate on whether Smith was heard uttering Richard's immortal lines: "Down, Down I come like glistering Phaeton, wanting the manage of unruly jades" on his abdication, but he might have said it mightn't he?

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